Digital versatile disc (DVD) video players recently become widespread. Especially, many DVD video players have a “resume play” function allowing a user to easily use the video players. When the user turns off the power during reproducing a DVD video and then turns on the power, thanks to this function, the video player reproduces the DVD video continuously from the position at the turn-off time. This function is realized as follows. The video player detects with software that the user turns off a power switch, and then stores information related to a reproducing position in a nonvolatile memory before turning off internal power. When the power switch is turned on later, the video player refers to the information and reproduces the video continuously from the position at the turn-off time.
When data on a disc having a scratch is reproduced, however, the reproducing is sometimes stopped. At this time, no key operation is accepted at all, so that the user often turns off the power against his/her will and then turns on the power again. When the resume play function works at this time, the video player tries to reproduce the data at the position having the scratch again, and stops again. Thus, the DVD video player having the conventional resume play function, in reproducing data on the disc having the scratch, stops at the same position even when the power is turned on again and again. The user cannot therefore operate the DVD video player at all, and the DVD video player comes into the locked state.